Saturday, March 28, 2015

So we've started making some house progress. Alongside having nearly every different tradesperson round to quote for everything from new locks, pest control, tree surgery, plumbing to electrics, we've started the refurb on the master bedroom.

It's bye bye bucolic Georgians picnicking on toile de joie wallpaper and massive built in wardrobes. Finds today include some 1990s porn mags, and vine and grape plaster friezes on top of the wardrobe. Tom and Jon got the wardrobes out, and started cutting the plasterboard to re board the old fireplace. (Thanks Jon!) I have been stripping wallpaper. Any Southampton friends who are free on Sunday night and fancy a bit of stripping, you'd be very welcome and we'll rustle up some food and beverages as a thank you.

I snuck out mid afternoon to get my hair dyed baylayage style in preparation for Eleanor's wedding by the lovely Claire of Uptown Curls. This great do cost me £45 for colour wash and blowdry. Very impressed, she always does exactly what I ask for, and treats you like the Queen. Love her!

Monday, March 23, 2015

There it is...
Six months after putting our offer in, we've finally moved.

Moving day itself went smoothly. We were packed up and waiting for the call to go and pick up the keys in 3 hours. I put this down to lots of advance packing, including some going to a storage unit, and to friends' garages. I also put this down to the amazing friends and family who came to help. Friends came in the evenings and weekends prior to help us pack and clean.
Friends and family also took days off work to come and help us move on the day. I feel so loved that people would do that.

It's a good job that they did too, as I was dying of a horrible cold on moving day. So horrible in fact that I only just shook it off this week, 2 weeks since it started. Headache, streaming nose, sore throat, eat ache, body aches and shivers, I had the lot. I was about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

We arrived at the new house to find a pile of bagged rubbish left out on the street overflowing from the bins, and the house utterly filthy. Dog hair and confetti in the light fittings filthy. Surfaces sticky and covered in dust. So our army of wonderful helpers split between cleaning, and helping us get all the furniture and boxes in.

One of the most impressive parts of the day was watching my Pickfords man dad managing the packing off the vans. Like multi dimensional Tetris, he arrange and rearranged, and everything arrived safely in one piece. I'd not seen him use this bit of his training before, and it was awesome.

In my cold addled state, I managed to burn my right hand pretty badly trying to use a steam cleaner. So my dad took me off to the walk in centre to be treated. I returned with my bandaged claw to find a fresh set of friends cleaning.

Then the diy and getting quotes began. Having been cleaning since we moved in, we decided to get a cleaning company in to deep clean the house as we weren't happy to unpack much in the filth. We had the locksmith round to fix a door, dishwasher delivered, tree surgeons to quote for taking down an irritating tree, double glazing repair, plumbers and so on. Tom's been doing lots of rewarding minor fit like fixing doors only being held on with one screw in the hinge, and putting flush handles back on toilets. There's a lot of small tasks like this, I think the people before weren't diy confident and just left things when they broke.

Today we got our first quote for getting the bathroom redone, so we're cracking on where we can. It badly needs it, as lots of things are leaky or damaged, and the smell was a bit much.

Funny thing smell. When I was having a wobbly day mental health wise (I just want to go home, and I can't because I live here now), the fact the house smelt of other people, dog, urine in the loos, and cheap aftershave in the second bedroom was really upsetting me. Now after the deep clean and some air fresheners things don't smell so odd and I'm starting to settle in.

Here's some pics:

Here's bedroom 3, which we're using as it's the only carpeted one, and while we decorate the master bedroom.

Living room, complete with chandelier I will give away free to a new home.